Benefits and Detriments of Slavery in the Deep South.pdf

Today we will ask: What were the main benefits of slavery for the
enslaved? And there were benefits. Were slaves safe from
lynchings?
What were the main detriments of slavery for the enslaved? Why
was it illegal to teach slaves how to read and write?
Is chattel slavery, where the slave is the property of the owner,
the only type of slavery? Are servants a type of slave? Were serfs
a type of slave? Are minimum wage employees who are not
earning a living wage a type of wage slave?
We will summarize our thoughts on these questions from our
many videos on American history and slavery.

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video.
Please feel free to follow along our PowerPoint script
posted to SlideShare.

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Benefits and Detriments of Slavery
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In July 2023, the state of Florida instructed teachers to teach children
that slaves did gain some benefits before the Civil War. When asked,
Governor Ron DeSantis suggested that some slaves did receive
vocational training that benefited them, mentioning blacksmiths. So, we
can also ask, What vocational or educational opportunities were open
for slaves to improve themselves?
Slaves did indeed receive some benefits under slavery. For example, for
them to work for their masters, their masters would have to feed them.
Free food is indeed a benefit, though it will not matter much unless
there are other benefits. So, we will simply answer these questions.

Slaves dance to banjo, anonymous folk painting, 1780

In the Land of King Cotton, Picking, 1909

To adequately answer these questions, we need to better
understand what it means to be a slave, and the various
types of slaves. We know there were numerous slaves in
the Roman Empire, but as the empire collapsed, over the
centuries slaves became less common, and were replaced
by serfs. Serfs were allowed some freedoms, they were
allowed to marry, they were technically not owned by
anyone, but serfs farmed the land and were not allowed
to leave the noble’s manor in which they were born. Serfs
were very poor, could they be considered slaves?

George Washington as Farmer at Mount Vernon, by Junius Brutus Stearns, 1851

Medieval illustration of men harvesting wheat, Queen Mary's Psalter, 1310

What about modern-day workers who earn only the
minimum wage, who do not earn enough to feed their
families with dignity, who are not paid a living wage?
Should they be considered to be a wage slave?
What is certain is that the practice of slavery varied by
culture. What distinguished the system of slavery in the
Deep South from the many forms of slavery in the ancient
world? Slavery in the Deep South was racial slavery, and
the blacks were seen as inferior to whites, divinely
condemned to servitude.

Lathe workers, by
Franz Eichhorst,
1900’s

Slaves working in the tobacco sheds on a plantation (1670 painting)

These were the general categories of slaves in all slave societies,
both ancient and modern: (RPEAT)
• Household servants, and small farm hand slaves. This was
often a milder form of slavery, sometimes servants were
treated like a part of the family. But in the Deep South, blacks
could never truly be treated as part of the family since blacks
were an inferior race.
• Concubines, both consenting and unwilling, were often
captured in war. Sexual abuse and rape of female slaves is a
problem for all cultures with slaves. Raping black slaves was as
rampant as it was profitable on Southern plantations.

• Least numerous: Independent city slaves who were tradesmen. Often,
they were allowed to retain some of proceeds from their trade and
buy their freedom. This type of slave was less common in the Deep
South, more common in ancient Greece and Rome.
• Most numerous: Field hands for large plantations, in the Deep South,
they worked under overseer’s whip. Since the slaveowner had minimal
contact with these slaves, their lives could be quite harsh.
• Slaves who worked in mines: this was usually a death sentence.
We see in the painting that woman slaves are sold nude. This was true in
most slave auctions, modern and ancient. After all, the buyer has the
right to inspect the property which he is buying.

Slave Market in Rome, Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1884
These were the general categories of slaves in all slave
societies, both ancient and modern :
• Household servants, and small farm hand slaves. This
was often a milder form of slavery, sometimes servants
were treated like a part of the family.
• Concubines, both consenting and unwilling, often
captured in war.
• Least numerous: Independent city slaves who were
tradesmen. Often, they were allowed to retain some of
proceeds from their trade and buy their freedom. This
type of slave was less common in the Deep South, more
common in ancient Greece and Rome..
• Most numerous: Field hands for large plantations,
worked under overseer’s whip. Since the slaveowner
had minimal contact with these slaves, their lives could
be quite harsh. In ancient Greece and Rome, many
POWs were enslaved to work the large ancient Roman
plantations.
• Slaves who worked in mines, usually a death sentence.

Major Benefit of Slavery in the Deep South
A cotton plantation on the Mississippi, 1884

There was one very real benefit of slavery to the enslaved in the Deep
South. Before the Civil War, slaves were far less likely to be lynched or
killed than were freed slaves after the war. The reason for this was
simple: it is illegal to damage someone’s property, and slaves were
extremely valuable. Slaves were the most valuable asset class in America
before the Civil War. Before the Civil War, a slave was worth as much as
an economy car is worth today.
The neighbors of a slave master couldn’t kill his slave, but he and his
overseers could. The runaway slave Frederick Douglass, in his youth,
witnessed an overseer killing an unruly slave. And it was common for a
master to beat his slaves, Frederick Douglass witnessed many such
beatings, often to simply satisfy the sadistic pleasure of a cruel overseer.

Whipped Slave in Baton Rouge, LA,
1863, the guilty overseer was fired.
Whipping Old Barney Overseer Gore shooting Denby

After the Confederacy lost the Civil War, and especially after
Reconstruction, lynchings of blacks became commonplace. Ida B
Wells was a brave black journalist who risked her life to report
on many of the lynchings of her day. Through her efforts and
those of WEB Du Bois, editor of the Crisis, the NAACP magazine,
they documented over six thousand lynchings through
newspaper accounts, the actual figures were likely over ten
thousand. There were gruesome lynchings scheduled for Sunday
afternoons, so the faithful could attend church services before. It
was rare for lynchers to be charged for murder in the Deep
South, and even rarer for Southern juries to convict them.

Slavery & Vocational Training in Deep South
Vocational training at Tuskegee Institute and Hampton Institute, 1870’s+

Was the average slave able to take advantage of vocational training, so
they could become blacksmiths, or other occupations? After the Civil
War, the freed slaves could attend black colleges, often tuition-free, such
as the Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee Institute, and most black
colleges offered vocational education as part of the curriculum. Before
the Civil War few black schools existed in the Deep South, whatever
training was at the whim of the planation owner, and whipping rather
than education was what was employed to increase production on most
plantations.
The vast majority of slaves were field slaves, there was no reason to train
them to do anything but pick cotton or some other crop. After the war,
most vocational training for blacks centered on agriculture and the
building trades, which likely included blacksmiths.

Rarely were slaves taught how to read and write. If a
slave were literate, he could then read the
abolitionist literature and start plotting his escape to
the North. In fact, as a consequence of the Nat
Turner slave rebellion of 1831, it was illegal to teach
a slave how to read and write. Nat Turner was both
literate and a preacher, and inspired by a solar
eclipse he interpreted as a divine sign, he led an
armed rebellion that murdered over sixty whites.

Nat Turner
and his
confederates
confer, by
Orville James,
1800's

(REPEAT) What were the political consequences of Nat Turner’s
slave rebellion?
More state legislatures prohibited teaching slaves and freed
blacks how to read, black schools in the South and the North
were destroyed by mobs.
There was prejudice against blacks in both the South and the
North, and there were free blacks in both the South and the
North, but an overwhelming majority of the black slaves labored
in the plantations and homesteads of the Deep South, which
meant that prejudice was always more intense in the South.
We discussed this rebellion in our video on:

• More state legislatures prohibited teaching slaves
and freed blacks how to read, black schools in the
North and South were destroyed by mobs.
• Black religious meetings had to be supervised by a
licensed white minister.
• Movements and public meetings of blacks were
restricted further.
• Many abolitionists saw Nat Turner as a black hero.
• Nat Turner’s Rebellion strengthened the resolve of
slave owners to defend slavery, black slaves
suffered harsher treatment, even demonized.
• Nat Turner’s rebellion strengthened the prejudices
of those who feared blacks.
What were the political consequences of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion?

The Underground Railroad, Charles Webber, painted 1893
Major Detriments of Slavery

Many slaves in the Deep South desperately sought to run away,
many risked their lives and the lives of their children to escape
through the informal Underground Railroad smuggling them to
freedom in the North. Often, they fled to Canada to escape the
slave catchers who pursued them.
Why were slaves so eager to escape? Aside from constant
whippings and abuse, often slave families were broken apart on
the auction block. In the seaboard states like Virginia, it was
more profitable to breed slaves for plantations in the Black Belt
Southern states, including Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
than it was to grow crops, often children were torn from their

Husbands, wives,
and families sold
indiscriminately to
different purchasers,
are violently
separated; probably
never to meet again.
1853

Former Slaves: Augustine Tolton, Booker T Washington, and Frederic Douglass
Examples From Slave Narratives

What were the benefits and detriments of slavery in
the Deep South? There were regional differences in
the institution of slavery which are revealed when
we review the best-known slave narratives of
Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery in the
1830’s Abolition Era, and Booker T Washington and
Augustine Tolton, who were emancipated at the end
of the Civil War.

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Maryland. He was
separated from his mother as an infant, his mother’s owner lived a
dozen miles away, he only saw her four or five times, and only at
night. His mother was likely raped by a white slave owner, he did
not know who his father was. He remembers how slaves “were
often savagely whipped and sexually abused; white masters could
do as they wished with their property. Slaves were given no beds,
they slept side by side on the cold, damp floor, covered by
miserable blankets.” Sometimes black children were fed at troughs
like hogs.

Frederick Douglass remembers: At the
farms he worked on when he was
young, “men and women slaves
received, as their monthly ration, eight
pounds of pork, or its equivalent in
fish, and one bushel of corn
meal. Their yearly clothing consisted of
two coarse linen shirts, one pair of
linen trousersone jacket, one pair of
winter trousers, made of coarse negro
cloth, one pair of stockings, and one
pair of shoes. . . The children unable to
work had neither shoes, stockings,
jackets, or trousers; their clothing
consisted of two coarse linen shirts per
year. When these wore out, they went
naked until next allowance day,” even
in the winter.

Like Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington was born a field slave in
southwest Virginia, the family lived in a one-room cabin, everyone
sleeping on the floor. He never knew who his father was, he suspected he
was one of the white masters. Unending toil, dawn to dusk, was their life,
the life of a slave, until his family was emancipated at the end of the Civil
War.
Booker T Washington was an illiterate slave, after Emancipation he
learned how to read and attended the Hampton Institute. He impressed
the headmaster, who recommended him to be the first headmaster of
the Tuskegee Institute. He was the leading black leader of his era; he
raised funds from Northern business tycoons to fund the impressive
expansion of Tuskegee Institute.

Augustine Tolton was born an illiterate field slave in Kentucky. Slaves of
Catholic owners sometimes had more dignity, their marriages were
recognized by the church and their births were recorded in the parish
registry. However, they were still slaves, and his biography records how
some families were broken up when the master’s estate was settled,
although parents and their children were kept together.
After the Civil War, Augustine Tolton overcame daunting obstacles to
attend seminary in Rome and be ordained as the first ex-slave black
Catholic priest in America, becoming literate in four languages, English,
German, Latin, and Koine Greek, shepherding a parish first in his adopted
city, Quincy, Illinois, then in Chicago.

Slavery did not end with the Civil War. The Reconstruction
Amendment abolishing slavery includes a loophole for
convict labor. The Deep South took advantage of this,
enslaving blacks picked up for vagrancy and bogus
infractions, farming them out as slave labor to plantations,
mines, and other businesses. Many blacks died under
concentration labor camp conditions. Peonage was not
substantially abolished until World War II under FDR’s
administration.

We also reflected on how the Jewish Old Testament
and rabbis, the Stoic Philosophers, and Christian
Church Fathers, over the centuries, sought to
alleviate the working conditions and improve the
dignity of slaves and servants.

Southerners in the Secession Conventions where the
Confederate states seceded from the Union proudly
proclaimed that they would be fighting the Civil War
specifically to protect the institution of slavery, and
that the black race was inferior to the white race.

The slave narratives we reviewed are highly readable and are interesting
because they provide a glimpse into the daily lives of those who lived in
a very different time.
WEB Du Bois was born in Massachusetts during Reconstruction and was
one of the first blacks to earn a PhD from Harvard. His history, Black
Reconstruction, though it was sidelined and mostly ignored when it was
written, eventually it changed the narrative on Reconstruction during
the Civil Rights Era of the Sixties. He quotes from the Congressional
Record many brutalities black freed slaves suffered during
Reconstruction. His essays, Soul of Black Folk, includes an essay on
sharecropping, the plantation labor system that replaced slavery that,
like serfdom, protected the black family, although it left black laborers
destitute, and bound to the land by mountains of debt.

https://youtu.be/x212gx1lNIA
https://youtu.be/J3TnQyig6Nk
https://youtu.be/CK4V3e-TPFU
https://youtu.be/JeRCM4PAqPk

Yale University has posted their two undergraduate
classes on black history on YouTube, they were
influenced by WEB Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction.
We have summarized these twenty-four lectures in
five shorter videos.

https://youtu.be/kmLg8CDjOOY
https://youtu.be/89ulb20cy8Q
https://youtu.be/f5nPNnvDBCY https://youtu.be/weGmYOe0Lyg

The book Bloody Shirt contains individual stories of
how difficult it was for Northern troops to protect
the civil rights and lives of freed slaves in the
defeated Southern states.
There are direct and indirect correlations between
the segregationist Jim Crow legislation and the
persecution of the Jews under the German Nazi
regime.

https://youtu.be/GQesHoV5IdI
https://youtu.be/_td3jPGD5TI https://youtu.be/PqFAUEXbi8k
https://youtu.be/ZEX050eTn38

WEB Du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP, was the
leading black leader in the era following Booker T
Washington. His life spanned the years from
Reconstruction, during the two World Wars, and
ending at the start of the Civil Rights Era of the
Sixties.

https://youtu.be/N2ZqixUxPmo https://youtu.be/Ntjl4xqQSfw
https://youtu.be/MNhkq69CIfo https://youtu.be/YwgrKvIjoc0

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quotes in this blog, please type in
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my blog to see the referenced
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